


Encounter

by Sondra



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra





	Encounter

I gaze into your eyes and am consumed by the haunting hunger of your heart:  
Voracious, insatiable appetite on behalf of all sentient life.  
Asking nothing, seeking nothing for the solitary man trapped inside the vision,  
Gloriously dwarfed by that vision,  
Happily, joyfully surrendering to its imperatives,  
Driven by them through a dozen doors to hell  
And never once shrinking from what lies on that other side.  
Perfectly prepared to be devoured by the agents of chaos and corruption,  
Casting a cold eye upon pain and death,  
Too, too secure in the blazing warmth of your own light...

And I, transfixed beneath that light  
Like a helpless worm on a glass slide beneath a microscope,  
Dissected with a glance.  
My heart torn and bleeding, feeling things it  
                                      never wanted to feel/eternally pleaded for the right to feel.  
Not a “worm” then: a caterpillar.  
The seeming tomb in which you’ve sealed me: a birth chamber  
From which, if I don’t flee in premature terror,  
I may one day fly free: a creature of beauty akin to your own.

I understand (too deep for words) why they go to the wall for you,  
Why he’d go to the ends of the earth for you,  
(And why he turned his tortured soul inside-out to get away from you).  
Your purity blinds me, burns me, binds me...  
(I wonder how long I can bear the burning without bolting.)  
I understand (too deep for words) how all my life has led me to you,  
A string of surrogates rehearsed me for you:  
Each encounter a gentle escalation of the stakes,  
Gradually drawing me closer to my destiny...

Now I stand before you in naked, shivering awe.  
“I’m just a man,” you say.  
But that’s precisely what makes it so awesome.  
From deep inside myself, wearing your face, the seed-germ of my being rises up to meet me.  
It pins me without mercy to an invisible cross, stretched between love and fear.  
It interrogates my soul:

                   **Does the welfare of mankind mean more to you than your own?  
**                    **How consistently will you choose freedom over comfort?**  
                   **Are you doing enough to promote justice in this world?**  
                   **(Is anyone?)**

Your questions melt my mind, Blake...scorch my heart...ignite my spirit...  
It will take me longer than a lifetime to reply.


End file.
